


We're Both Scared

by FromLove2War



Category: Shameless (US)
Genre: Angst, Bipolar Disorder, Day 4, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Future Fic, Gallavich Week, M/M, Mania
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-18
Updated: 2014-06-18
Packaged: 2018-02-05 06:03:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,761
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1808068
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FromLove2War/pseuds/FromLove2War
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Harsh words are exchanged because dealing with Ian's bipolar disorder has been difficult for everyone</p>
            </blockquote>





	We're Both Scared

**Author's Note:**

> It think this might be slightly OOC IDEFK  
> I tried to research first hand accounts of bipolar disorder so if I got any of the feelings or side-effects incorrect I'm sorry

Ian slowly crawled onto the messy bed where his boyfriend slept, limbs spread to all four corners. He took a second to admire his cute naked butt, placed a kiss where bullet holes used to be as he continued his climb until he was draped lightly over Mickey’s back.  
“Mick” he whispered as he laid a light kiss where shoulder and neck meet.  
“Get up Mickey, I want you to come with me” he muttered and slowly lowered more of his weight onto Mickey’s naked back.  
“Ugh...you’re fucking heavy. Get off me, asshole and go back to bed.” Mickey demanded as he ineffectually tried to flip Ian off of his back.  
Ian gave a huff of laughter that sent goosebumps down Mickey’s spine  
“You weren't complaining about how heavy I was last night” Ian murmured with a subtle thrust of his hips that pushes his cock that is slowly fattening inside his running shorts more firmly into the crack of Mickey’s ass. “Come on, Mickey get up, I want you to go running with me, the sun is shining, it’s beautiful out, come on it will be fun”  
Mickey groaned and tried to pull the pillow over his head but instead just ended up hitting Ian in the face with it.  
“No fucking way am I running. You want me to fucking die? I smoke too many cigarettes for that jogging shit. Fuck off, man I’m trying to sleep.  
Ian bounced on his back “ Well come with me to that army obstacle course you set up for me? Remember that? Do you think it’s still there? Come on, get up, let’s go, you don’t even have to exercise you can just sit up on the ledge like you used to, it’ll be like old times.” Ian resumed kissing the back of Mickey’s neck “We can even take a trip down to the dugouts, I know you remember all the shit we used to get up to in the dugouts” he told him with a suggestive wiggle of his hips.  
Mickey finally managed to push Ian off his back and rolled over with an annoyed sigh as he eyed Ian suspiciously “God, Gallagher! Come on man. I just got to sleep like 4 hours ago. It’s like 85 fucking degrees at 8am, we are not gonna go fuck in the dugout. Seriously, what the fuck? Did you take your pill?”  
Ian looked at Mickey in frozen shock and while Mickey was still blurry eyed with sleep he had the distinct feeling that he may have asked the wrong thing.  
“Yes I took my goddamn pill, Mick. Thanks for spoiling the mood, now get the hell up and lets go.”  
Mickey grabbed his arm in an attempt to pull him back into bed but Ian quickly jerked his arm away  
“Get the hell off me. You know what? Forget it, I’ll go by myself” Ian started to exit the room but gave one last disgusted look over his shoulder “Screw this” and slammed the door on his way out.  
Mickey hopped out of the be and quickly threw on the closest pair of sweatpants on the floor before jerking the door open and running after Ian.  
“Hey!” He yelled as he confronted Ian in the kitchen “‘Will you calm the fuck down, it was just a simple question”  
As Mickey walked closer be was brought up short by the look on Ian’s face which every clearly said “don’t you dare fucking touch me”  
Mickey held both hands up in surrender  
“Hey easy! I’m fucking sorry...okay..I was just...I just wanted to…”  
“No!” Ian shouted “You don’t get to ‘just’ anything! I am fucking trying here. I take that stupid fucking pill twice a day, even when all my mind tells me to do is flush it down the fucking toilet! I don’t need you asking me if I took the fucking pill. I go to bed every night promising myself that I will not be Monica, I will take my meds no matter how good I might feel. I wake up every morning with the constant side effects, running to the bathroom to vomit or have diarrhea but I take the fucking pill. Half the time I am too scared to get on the scale because I have probably gained another 20 pounds but I take the fucking pill. You don’t get to doubt me every time I smile…. every time I wake up a little bit happy or sleep a little late.” Ian looked Mickey right in the eye and finally lowered his voice “But then you should know that I take my pills, don’t you fucking count them every day?

Mickey’s gaze skittered away from Ian guiltily at that, because he did count Ian’s pill. Every morning before he left for work and every night before he went to bed, he had to check for his own peace of mind. Because no matter how much better these past six month had been, Mickey still had nightmares about those days of near catatonic depression, he remembers the morning that Lip and Fiona burst in the house ready to physically drag Ian to the clinic and he will never forget the tears and resentment, the fights and cruel words slung in those first days and weeks with they waited for the medicine to begin to work.

“Yes I am happy today, I slept great after we fucked our brains out until God only knows what time this morning and I wake up in our bed with the sun shining and you hogging the pillows. All the shit I dreamed about while you were in juvie and when I was in the Army, I have that now with you and fuck you, I get to be happy about it without you asking if I’m ‘feeling a little crazy today’ just because I have a smile on my fucking face.”

Mickey just stood there, he said nothing but lots of things were swirling around in his head. Tons of different emotions darted across his face, most would have immediately brought Ian’s tirade to a halt if he had caught a glimpse of them but at that moment he was too angry to pay attention.

“You have no idea what it is like to feel on top of the world, like there is absolutely nothing out there I couldn't do, no challenge I couldn't accomplish and then to wake up the next morning feeling like I barely deserve to be alive. Do you know what it feels like to just want to hide inside yourself? Have you ever been so lost in your own mind that you don’t even know what day of the week it is. When is the last time you have been so down that even the sound of your little sisters voice annoys you? You don’t get it, you don’t know what it was like. I take the fucking pills because I never want to feel like that again, and you are not helping me by being fucking suspicion of every single smile.

Mickey looked down and ran his thumb across this bottom lip a few times before looking back at Ian, shaking his head and turning to re-enter the bedroom they shared and closing the door.  
Ian stood there staring at the closed door for a few short seconds that seemed like hours with the stark silence that had descended in the house after he had finished his rant. Just when he had decided to follow Mickey into the bedroom so they could finish hashing this out, he noticed Mandy standing in the threshold between the living room and the kitchen. She was shaking her head and looking at Ian in absolute shock.

“I don’t know what he said to piss you off but that was….” She took a deep breath but didn’t finish her sentence.  
“Mandy, just..” Ian started  
“Do you know what it like around here when you were lying in that bed not eating, not talking, not moving.” Mandy interrupted with tears in her eyes  
“Mandy, don’t cry. shit, It’s ok” Ian tried to comfort her.  
“No!” Mandy said with her arm stretched forward to prevent Ian from approaching her and trying to offer comfort “Sometimes I don’t understand your relationship with each other but I watch you two. You fight over the stupidest shit and then you fuck and make up and turn around and start the whole cycle again. And I do my fucking best to stay out of it. because I love you, you will always be my best friend but how fucking dare you.” Mandy said, somehow she had gone from not wanting Ian to approach her to being right in his face.  
“Don’t you dare tell him he doesn't know what it was like, that he isn't fucking helping you. Do YOU know what it was like? You were in the bed with the covers pulled over your head, while he was out here fighting for you” she screamed pointing towards the living room. “How many nights did he not eat, because he was trying to convince you to just take a sip of water, just take one bite of a sandwich. How many days did he sit in that room not sleeping, just watching you because fucking Fiona had him convinced that you were going to try to slit your own fucking throat!”

He was stunned and at a loss for words as he watched Mandy wipe her tears and walk away from him shaking her head.

“He was so fucking scared” She whispered, so low Ian almost missed it “I have seen him hurt, bloody and beaten but I’m not sure if I have ever seen him cry until you were lying in that bed not moving. Yeah he’s an asshole and a pain in the fucking ass but that….” she turned to face him “..he didn't deserve that shit”

The door to the bedroom swung open and Mickey walked out fully dressed, he didn't even look at them but he had obviously heard what Mandy had been screaming. “Mandy, just leave it.” he said with a shake of his head as he walked out the front door and softly closed it behind him.  
Ian wondered if he should go after him and he knew they needed to talk and while he had been legitimately angry when he had been yelling at Mickey, he now thought maybe had overreacted and said somethings that he should regret. He gazed at the closed door for a few seconds before turning around to try to talk to Mandy only to find her walking away towards her room, unlike Mickey, she slammed the door hard enough to rattle every window in the house.  
Ian took a seat at the kitchen table to think about what had just happened.  
\---------

It was well past midnight when Mickey finally made it back home. Ian had sat at the kitchen table for hours waiting for him so that they could have a much needed talk. When it became clear that Mickey might not be returning, Ian had sent him a text to apologize and say that they really needed to talk and asking him to just come home.  
Ian was lying in their bed, in the dark room when he heard the front door opening and closing. He had turned on his right side to face the bedroom door when Mickey finally walked through it. Neither one of them spoke, just looked at each other for a few seconds before Mickey quietly close the door, leaving them with just the street lights and the moon shining through the open curtains. He slowly walked towards the edge of the bed and sat with his back to Ian as he bent over to remove his shoes. Ian watched in silence as he removed all of his clothes down to his boxers before he slid into the bed and lay face up, arms at his side as far away from Ian as he could get without being on the floor.  
This is not what they did, they didn't sleep apart, not touching, not acknowledging each other. Since the very first night that Mickey’s bed had become “their bed”, they had fallen asleep wrapped in each other's arms, draped across one another, sometimes even on top of each other. It had never been too hot, or too cold, neither of them had been too sick or too mad to want to sleep without the touch of the others skin.  
Except for those few weeks. Those few weeks that had been at the heart of their argument that morning. 

“It’s still scary for me you know” Ian whispered to Mickey who was still stoically staring at ceiling. “The fact that I’m bipolar” he clarified in case Mickey had missed it. “All day I’m reminded, any time I open the medicine cabinet to get a band-aid or the toothpaste, the pills are there staring me in the face in that stupid orange fucking bottle. Whenever is get nauseous from the smell of foods that I used to love, a reminder. I can’t walk out the door of this house without a bottle of water in my hand because I am worried that in 30 seconds my mouth will be dry as desert but every sip I take of that water is a bitter reminder going down. If you had asked Fiona a year ago what she thought of psychiatrists, she would have said they were for rich fucks who had enough time and money to waste sitting around complaining to some stranger about their problems. Now she smiles and hugs me and tells me how “great” it is that I go to the shrink every week.” Ian was quiet for a minute as he looked at Mickey’s profile “This is not what you signed up for and that scares me the most.”  
That last statement finally had blue eyes meeting green.  
“I’m sorry” Ian told him. “That stuff I said this morning…” he shrugged “I don’t know..a year ago you would have just thought I had woken up happy and wanted to spend time with you, not that I was crazy.  
“I don’t think you're fucking crazy” Mickey finally spoke up. “I just..I fucking worry sometimes. Alright? Fuck!” he said while he wiped a hand down his face. “You don’t think this shit is scary for me too?”  
Ian slid closer to Mickey and ran a hand down his bare chest. “Mick if it’s too much, if you feel like you don’t want to deal with it everyday just tell me, I promise I won’t be mad. I can go back home but we can still see each other.  
“I didn't fucking fight Fiona to keep up here with me while you were sick, just to send you the fuck back now that you are getting better. Hell no” He shook his head.  
“It’s way more than you should have to deal with, our relationship was never supposed to be this hard.”  
Mickey let out a small laugh and slid slightly close to Ian. “Nothing is fucking easy. You live in this house with my fucking wife and screaming kid. Not to mention my idiot fucking brothers wandering in and out like two fucktards. It’s not what either of us thought it would be but fuck we just have to deal.”  
They were quiet for long enough that Ian wonder if Mickey had maybe fallen asleep when he heard him mutter “ You said a year ago I would have thought you had just woken up happy but a year ago we would not have fallen asleep together. I like this year better than last year” Mickey said with a shrug.  
“Come here” Ian rolled over onto his back and pulled Mickey close so that his head was on Ian shoulder and his right arm thrown across his stomach. Ian ran a hand down his back.  
‘I’m sorry. Do you forgive me?”  
“Yeah, I fucking guess”  
“Are you sorry?” Ian asked  
Mickey looked up at Ian from his place on his chest “Da fuck did i do?”  
When a single raised eyebrow was his only answer he gave a small smile “ Yeah man, I’m sorry too.” He was rewarded with a slow, sweet kiss as a part of his forgiveness.  
“Mandy’s going to chop my balls off in the morning” Ian murmured right before they fell asleep in each others arms.

**Author's Note:**

> I had to put Mandy in there because the things she said Mickey may have been feelings but I don't believe he would be able to articulate them, especially not in the heat of the moment.
> 
> Follow me on tumblr : http://fromlove2war.tumblr.com/


End file.
